Ford Indy speedster V8 - Chasing Perfection - With Extra Photos!

The elusive AMBR award for hot rod building has tormented many a builder and customer who toiled for years to possess it but failed. At each year's Grand National Roadster show, the America's Most Beautiful Roadster competition is judged by committee, and winning is not just about swirl-free paint and having every bolt head clocked the same way. Half of the criteria is based on how the cars are presented to the judges; every roadster must be driven in front of the judges in a confined space. Entrants have to fire up their engines cold, then drive in a circle from position in the field of entries and past judges who are scrutinizing every aspect of the car, and then park it. The exhaust needs to sound right. The tire fitment must be on point. Rubber scuffing on the ground because the alignment is off? You might as well just keep on driving right out of the building. It's that serious. Even how the driver looks in the car matters; there can't be an awkward pose required in the seat, because the judges are going to see how comfortable the driver is within the hot rod. The left knee can't hit the dashboard when a judge asks to push in the clutch. Microscopic details mean the difference between winning and losing, and spending seven figures on a competitive AMBR car is the rule and not the exception. The winning hot rod needs to be perfect.

Since 1950, the AMBR title has been bestowed 65 times to 62 different hot rods. There was a tie in 1955 between Blackie Gejeian's '27 Ford roadster called “Shishkabob” and Ray Anderegg's roadster of the same vintage. Richard Peters won in 1958 and 1959 with his Ala Kart '29 Ford truck. Bob Reisner won twice in 1967 and 1968 with his custom-bodied Invader. The litany of past AMBR cars includes only six track-style roadsters. Make that seven now that Bill Lindig's Indy Speedster V8 stole the show in 2012.

Bill hasn't always owned this fabled roadster, but he's followed it over the years--along with the rest of the hot rodding world--as race-car builder Jackie Howerton made progress on the scratch-built car, one part at a time. The project has been on and off the radar for nearly two decades, showing up at events in unfinished form and wowing hot rodders with a level of craftsmanship and ingenuity not seen before. This is due in part to Jackie's IndyCar racing experience but mostly because he's a skilled machinist, a master fabricator, and a rabid perfectionist. Behind the wheel, he won championships. Behind a garage door, he fashioned art from aluminum and steel, often tossing near-perfect, hand-formed body panels in the trash and starting over until he was satisfied with the result. The running joke in his neighborhood was that if you knew which day Jackie was taking out the trash, you could probably scab yourself a complete car from his refuse.

When the opportunity came to buy Jackie's unfinished roller, Bill didn't hesitate for a second. He had watched the car morph from a bare tube chassis into a torsion bar–suspended entrant skeleton with hand-pounded body panels, each raw car-show appearance punctuated with another jaw-dropping modification. The steering and suspension parts are stainless steel. Jackie machined door latches, hinges, and a fuel filler. The firewall began life as a billet of aluminum and was sculpted with an end mill into a part that's also an engine mid-plate and front-suspension mounting point. The engineering and detail that you don't see in the Speedster is astounding. Because the car never got as far as the paint booth or interior shop, everyone who viewed the roadster over the years had a vision of what the final result should be. Bill had his own ideas, too, and sent the car to So-Cal Speed Shop for completion. That process took four more years.

Finishing someone else's project is always dicey, but this one had a special pitfall. The Speedster was famous among hard-core hot rodders, and the fab work was on par with the best ever seen, so finishing it in the manner Jackie intended, while simultaneously putting Bill's mark on it, proved difficult. It was not taken lightly by Pete Chapouris of So-Cal, his staff, the subcontractors, or Bill. Shortcuts were not an option. It was a challenge and an opportunity, as So-Cal had never before won the AMBR award, and although the shop would be bringing an underdog body style into the fray, it wasn't any ordinary hot rod, either.

The lengths to which the build crew went to continue the theme are astounding. The car arrived at So-Cal with the chassis only tack-welded together. Monty "Moose" Hutchinson spent days practicing Jackie's welding style, extending the original TIG welds around the tubing so fans wouldn't be able to tell where Jackie's welds ended and the new ones began. Jackie had not yet considered where the clutch linkage would poke through the firewall, where the drag link would be located through the body, or where the exhaust would be routed, so those were all modifications that needed to be made. The cowl needed a functioning vent, an engine of equal worth had to be assembled and fitted, the interior needed upholstery--the list was long. And, most important, the question of how to paint the car had to be answered. The years went by fast, but the outcome was worth it.

20/38A super-low ceter of gravity, 110-inch wheelbase, a lightweight engine and race car suspension geometry make this roadster one bad mutha in the corners.

Is it the perfect hot rod? That depends on who you ask. We would have chosen a different engine configuration, but that's just us. Some fans wish it had never seen the business end of an HVLP gun, because the raw look was Jackie's signature. Yet the AMBR win is certainly vindication for everyone involved in finishing the roadster. Not many Track Ts have earned the title, so clearly this is a special car. Perhaps the best confirmation anyone can give is from Jackie himself, who smiled when he saw the finished product.